Versatile Positioning: Chaises are designed to support various reclining positions, allowing individuals to relax comfortably. They can be positioned in different areas of a room, such as near a window or fireplace, and can serve as a focal point or a luxurious accent piece. I mean, Laski makes mention of penicillin, yet, no antibiotics seem to be part of the treatment and the MC herself still believes that fresh air, sunlight, and milk will provide a cure - much like prescribed in Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain (1924). Again, this is not a real criticism of the book, just an additional question I derived from it.

For the rest of what I think about this book, I'll link to my reading journal. Sometimes for what I want to say, this little box here where I'm supposed to post my thoughts just isn't the right venue. Don't worry - there's not much in the way of spoilers there. In Melanie's world, everything is cold and clinical. She can't even visualise her son's nursery from her bedroom "from which all flavour of love and joy and delight had long since fled." Things are done efficiently, but without warmth: "The knitting had been done, swiftly and beautifully but surely not with love, by Sister Smith."

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My Kindle Edition contained a short preface by P.D. James, where she describes the novel as “terrifying”. Personally I didn’t have that reaction. “Slightly creepy”, is probably as far as I would go in describing this. Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading The Victorian Chaise-Longue. Much of the book is stream of consciousness as Melanie tries to make sense (or adjust) to what has happened, beginning with the obvious ‘is it a dream?’, to considerations of (if it isn’t a dream) how one might convince others that you are not who you appear to be. As the book progresses it become apparent that there are mysteries concerning the body/life our protagonist seems to be inhabiting, and the novel becomes increasingly claustrophobic as these are revealed. I felt that Laski captured the changing moods of Melanie very well as she navigated varying emotions of wonder, fear, frustration and empathy with her old and new self, whoever her ‘self’ might be. This is written in a style that epitomizes (to me at least) the beautiful precise, peculiarly ‘English’ prose of the 1950’s, which helps ground the book in its own time of writing, which I think adds to its sense of containment. As Melanie realises that she is trapped, effectively imprisoned in the body of a dying woman, she begins to doubt various ‘truths’ about her existence – more specifically, her identity, her sanity, and perhaps most troubling of all, her ability to return to the life she once knew. Claire Platten studied Fine Art at University, had a successful career in marketing and graphic design before re-training as an upholsterer. Whilst working on furniture commissions, Claire also works on her own collections. Working with modern and traditional techniques, Claire puts her experience with design, colour and craft to produce unique pieces of furniture.

Yes I did like it. It’s not a book I would fall in love with, but it’s a fascinating and strange little book. This was the second book I read that was published by Persephone. They publish books from the early 20th century that were written by female authors and have gone out of print or have been forgotten. I find the books they publish interesting so far and want to continue to discover their hidden gems. Méridienne:You’re probably most familiar with the méridienne style of chaise longue. a méridienne has a high head-rest, and a lower foot-rest, joined by a sloping piece. Whether or not they have anything at the foot end, méridiennes are asymmetrical day-beds. They were popular in the grand houses of France in the early 19th century. Its name is from its typical use: rest in the middle of the day, when the sun is near the meridian. English journalist, radio panelist, and novelist: she also wrote literary biography, plays, and short stories. This only adds to Melanie's confusion as she tries to make sense of her situation: the unknown, combined with eerie familiarity. "There came a new dread, or an old fear long known and endured." Without full control of her own mind, and being told she is not who she thinks she is, Melanie's sense of identity is even more lost than when she was just a helpless patient.Dijo: Quizás Milly Baines murió aquí. Entonces, sin duda Milly Baines está muerta, dijo sin emoción, Milly y Adelaide y Lizzie, todas muertas y podridas hace rato. Este cuerpo que habito debe haberse podrido inmundamente, esta funda de almohada debe de ser un pedazo de trapo, esta colcha debe de estar apolillada, crujiente y pegajosa por los huevos de las polillas, cayéndose a pedazos mugrientos. Todo está muerto y podrido, el jugo de cebada contaminado, el camisón raído y tirado, estas manos, este cuerpo entero pestilente, podrido, muerto. Se estremeció y supo que se estremecía en un cuerpo muerto hacía mucho tiempo. Se le puso la piel de gallina, y era una piel que se había puesto verde y licuefacta y se había convertido en polvo húmedo junto con la húmeda madera pútrida del ataúd. Is it a nightmare, time travel, madness or altered state, or (as she eventually wonders), some sort of test from Fate, Providence, or God? El éxtasis siempre me pareció sospechoso, dijo. Sabía que era maligno, le dije a Guy; bueno, no con tanta seguridad, pero lo sospechaba, se lo pregunté a él. Fue la primera vez que nos acostamos; no, no la primera vez, no es así, admitió ella, sino la segunda, y recordó la desvencijada cama con baldaquín del hotel que quedaba en Forest of Dean. Y después, fue como regresar de la muerte a la vida, y le dije a Guy: No puede ser lo correcto, no puede ser que estemos hechos para sentir semejante felicidad, y él estaba casi dormido y se rió, y dijo que en el fondo yo era una puritana. Y le pregunté si a la gente religiosa le parecía bien sentir éxtasis a través de Dios, y él dijo que sí, que esa era la única manera que les parecía que estaba bien. Después se durmió, y afuera amanecía gris y lluvioso, y me acordé de la vez en que tenía dieciséis años y caminaba por South Adley Street y entré en una capilla. Adentro no había nadie y sonaba el órgano. Me senté y mi mente se inundó de Dios, se unió a Dios en éxtasis, y también esa vez regresar fue como regresar a la vida, exactamente igual que cuando me acosté con Guy, el mismo idéntico éxtasis, viniera de un hombre o de Dios.

Sounds mysterious? Well, it isn't. It's just that the plot is one thing if you read it with the expectation that everything in the book happens just as it is described. If, however, you begin to doubt the narrator, you may start to wonder what is really going on. A fairly weird novella from the 1950s. Melanie, a young woman in early 50s London, visits an antique shop where she feels strangely drawn to an ugly Victorian chaise-longue. While I loved the book for its content and delivery, there were a few quibbles I had with the writing, which seemed to jump about a bit (But then, this may have been a way to show the MC's state of mind.) and with one element that left me puzzled - had the treatment of TB in the late 1940s/early 1950s really not moved on from the 1920s? I thought it was too detailed on describing rooms and furniture and such, and I was losing interest as a result. I think if it had been maybe a long short story and if it had been tightened up a bit, I would have liked it more. As it was, I felt I was experiencing the nightmare with Melanie/Millie in real time like over the course of two hours. Two hours to read the book and I was getting bored. If I could have read it in 30 minutes (a long short story with a lot of I feel unnecessary details removed) I would have been more positive to this story.

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The main character Melanie was interesting. Of course the story mostly revolved around her and the rest of the characters just felt like actors in a play. I know everyone else wasn’t dealt with very in depth, but I liked that they just felt like a cast of characters in a play. I feel like that made it interesting. Wow. What a weird novella. I read this for the first time on June 15, 2001. A GR friend had told me that another book of hers was excellent (To Bed with Grand Music) so I thought I would read this again, and then read the book recommended to me. Romanzo breve di genere gotico, Sulla chaise-longue racconta la storia della benestante Melanie, convalescente dalla tubercolosi, che appisolatasi su una chaise-longue usata ma mai utilizzata dai suoi nuovi proprietari, si ritrova imprigionata nel corpo di una ragazza malata, in un'altra vita e un'altra epoca.

The nightmarish voice that binds the limbs in dreadful paralysis while the danger creeps and creeps and at last will leap." I will not reveal anything else about the plot (and the above is pretty much revealed on all general descriptions of the book), other than that the plot takes on a different shape depending on how you approach it. Sanitariums for recuperating tuberculosis patients in the Swiss Alps featured chaise lounges that resembled a hospital bed/chaise cross. The connotation, while initially masculine, became entirely feminine, and associated with weakness and illness. It, therefore, was a blend of meanings, both connoting high class and an access to leisure time, as well as the feminine “constitution”. The legacy of the chaise lounge in gendered understandings of health and mental health continues.A long legacy of prescriptive and sexist science remains at the foundation of psychiatric medical treatment for women. From the first diagnosis of hysteria to the present-day disparities in mental health treatment, the tradition of medicating women’s emotions has held constant. Within this context, the line between empirical treatment and medicating the lived experiences of women grows dangerously thin. Treatment of psychiatric symptoms in women (by mostly men, until a few decades ago) has always been connected to ideas about sexuality and domesticity. Whether “over-sexed,” “repressed,” too attentive to their children, or too withdrawn, psychiatric diagnoses often centered on women’s perceived domestic failures. The chaise lounge was part of a system of treating women’s dissatisfaction and reasonable responses to a unequal society as a mental illness, as well as catering to a view of women as fundamentally weaker than men.

How do you restore a Chaise Longue?

It could have been any conceivable period of time in which the thought that all these were strange took shape and words." One of Millie’s visitors is a young man called Gilbert, and on seeing him Millie/Melanie feels an intense physical longing. It’s clear that Millie and Gilbert were secret lovers and his was the body that “painfully crushed” Millie’s. there was only her body’s need to lie on the Victorian chaise-longue, that, and an overwhelming assurance, or was it a memory, of another body that painfully crushed hers into the berlin-wool.”